Take This Waltz
by Zigster
Summary: Random one shot set to Leonard Cohen's "Take This Waltz". All Human, AU. The basics: A girl sits in the dark waiting hopelessly for her love to return. Little does she know, he has. Couple makes sense as Edward and Bella.


A/N: This came out of me while I was trying to write a new chapter for "There's No Place Like..." The Leonard Cohen song "Take This Waltz" started to play on my itunes and suddenly I wanted to write a little scene to go along with it. Half of this was written before I even realized what I was doing, but it clearly doesn't fit into TNPL. It doesn't fit anywhere really.

If you're wondering, the lyrics of the song are lifted from the poem "Little Viennese Waltz" by Frederico Garcia Lorca. I'm sure all of you know who he is by now. Don't pretend that you don't. If not, go Wiki him right now. What is wrong with you?

The couple in this really don't have names, in my original version at least. The romance of it works better if they remain nameless. They make sense as Edward and Bella though; if you'd like to picture them as thus, so be it. Hence my categorization of this story.

Sorry for the length of this a/n I just wanted to prove to you that I am in fact trying to write more of TNPL, but things like this happen as apposed to actual chapters. So, I'm sharing it with you to tide you over. The result is a jumble of things, all connecting in some strange six degrees of separation that came out of my subconscious as this.

**The Basics:**

It's all human. (I think)

It's set in Paris.

It's mad hot/humid out.

Enjoy!

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**Her**

_"Oh, I want you, I want you, I want you. On a chair with a dead magazine..." _

I looked over at my radio, surprised at the english I suddenly heard coming from the French station. I knew that song, and it always made me cry. The lyrics were filled with sex and longing, and on top of their suggestive nature, they were extremely melancholy. It was a frustrating song, because it was a song about giving up. Letting go of something still so desperately desired. I rested my head on the back of the chair I was sitting on. Ironically there was a pile of old magazines and books next to it. What a perfect setting, I thought bitterly. The old cafe chair was turned round, facing the window and my arms hugged its back, with my legs splayed on either side. I was looking out on the street below, watching the people walk by. It was too hot. Too hot. Damn the French and they're lack of air conditioning.

"_... on a bed where the moon has been sweating..." _Leonard Cohen sang to me again from the corner, and I laughed. The moon would most definitely perspire on night like this. I looked up at it then, shinning down, pooling blue light around my rooms from the open windows. I turned my head and looked down at my elongated shadow on the ground, cascading towards the empty bed. Singular and lonely.

I really should change the song, I thought. I lifted my head once again from where it rested on my arms, feeling the breeze of the fan reaching me from its twirling perch on the armoire. It cooled me for a few seconds before it continued on its rotation back out towards the rest of the room. Hopelessly trying to circulate the air in the stagnant humidity of the night. Surely, it would soon turn to pure water and drown me. Taking me out of my misery. Or, maybe that was just wishful thinking?

Laughter on the street brought my attention back outside the window. Looking down at the shimmering cobblestones, even they couldn't stand the heat. There even seemed to be a slight haze around the street lamps that glowed in the night. Their dim yellow swam around the head of the posts, casting the light into a fog that most certainly was caused by the moisture in the air.

On the street corner there was a cafe. Men stripped down to their undershirts were milling about, not sitting but standing as they sipped their night caps. Surely no one could stand to sit in this weather. Even my thighs were sticking to the wood of the chair, I shifted then, finding a new place on the seat that wouldn't be warmed from my touch.

"..._There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking... They've been sentenced to death by the blues..." _

Ah, I thought. He's wrong. The men down at the cafe were still talking, lamenting and emoting endlessly on the ideals that they would never realize in their lifetimes. All talk, no action, were how they were now. The children of the revolution having passed on into oblivion, with these new fools toiling around in their shadows, attempting fruitlessly to stand on their shoulders, trying to see what only the old school had the genius to experienced.

"..._ take this waltz, it's been dying for years._"

I was born into the wrong era I decided. The wrong time, and the wrong place. Why be bitter about it? There was nothing I could change. The one thing I really wanted to change was my loneliness. My heartache. I turned my face away from the pseudo-intellectuals on the street below and back to the radio. Willing the song to end but not having the energy to go and end it. It reminded me of him, and as much as he hurt me by leaving, I never wanted to forget him.

_"...There's an attic where children are playing_

_Where I've got to lie down with you soon_

_In a dream of hungarian lanterns_

_In the mist of some sweet afternoon_

_And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow_

_All your sheep and your lilies of snow_

_Ay, ay, ay, ay..." _

At that I started to sing along softly.

_"...Take this waltz, take this waltz_

_With its I'll never forget you, you know..."_

Eloquent bastard, I thought, and then I chided myself. You could never hate Lorca. He was too giving a soul, you could only love a person like him. He never ran from his feelings, instead he put them into the world.

I collected the locks of dampened hair off my shoulders and piled them high on my head, holding them there with my hand. This time turning my neck into the breeze of the fan. Allowing it to cool my fevered skin and send shivers through me. I sat there wishing it were him doing it. Cooling me down with his own cool breath coming from his lips. To feel his tongue on my skin again, languid and soft. I closed my eyes and let that feeling sink in. If only...

xxxxxxxxxx

**Him**

I stood there, transfixed. I had walked in several minutes before, but couldn't bring myself to speak. I simply stood and watched her. Her small movements. The way she shifted in the chair. The small tilts of her head, taking in the breeze from the fan. The way she regarded the people on the street, with a mixture of contentment and pity; bitterness and sorrow. The emotions spilled across her profile in the blue light from the moon, while she mostly had her back turned to me. There were no lights on in the rooms, only the glow spilling in from the large floor to ceiling French windows. All of them were open, their small balconies beyond them breaking up the composition of the street below into long rectangular sections.

The room was still bare. She had acquired nothing it seemed, since I'd been gone. The bed was made up of plain white cotton sheets and an old quilt was draped over the bottom of the frame. Surely it had been discarded for the weather. It held the only color in the room. The walls with their molding and plaster decorations were all bare and an off white color, made ever darker in the midnight light. The armoire held a fan, and next to the only chair in the apartment was a pile of books and magazines. It was a sad picture, a lonely one, made beautiful by its sole inhabitant. Her.

The radio was playing a song I knew she liked. It made her cry though sometimes when she was feeling particularly passionate and that made me dislike it. I hated to see her cry, for any reason. A face like hers should never be stained with tears. The only flush it required was from her blushes. She was too perfect for make up.

I watched as she gathered up her hair, piling it up on top of her head, holding it steady with her arm, as she gently sang along to the music. It wanted to photograph her like that, and keep her forever etched in my brain. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of boxers. _My _boxers. Her legs and feet were bare otherwise, and her skin shown with the slight perspiration it had developed from the heat of the night. There was small line of darkened material where her tank top met her spine. The sweat having soaked through the cloth there. I was drawn in by it.

_"... my mouth on the dew of your thighs..."_ the man sang from the corner radio and my ears perked up. The lyrics having driven my mind from thoughts of composition to that of lust. I missed the feel of her thighs, and the feel of my mouth on them. I wanted to go to her then. Show her that I was back and would never leave again. What would she say? I wondered.

"... _and I'll yield to the flood of your beauty. My cheap violin and my cross.._."

A woman was singing with the man now, and her high soprano trilling in the background made me think even more that the woman before me should no longer be alone. I would never want to leave her, and would certainly yield to her beauty for everyday of my life.

I put down my bag, allowing the soft thud on the floor to indicate my presence in the room. She tilted her head in response but didn't turn to me, only to the breeze of the fan as it once again blew across her skin, taking the wisps of hair at her face, tickling her shoulders as they flowed in the wind. She smiled, and I was lost in it, walking forward without even the slightest hesitation.

_".. oh my love, oh my love...."_

Five paces more and she'd be in my arms. Damn the heat, I yearned for the touch of her moistened skin.

"t_ake this waltz, take this waltz... It's yours now. It's all that there is."_

The man and woman were only humming now. Their duet ending with the fading of the music. The final words were melancholy and sad; finite and unfufilled, but our relationship didn't have to mirror it. I was next to her then, looming above her, under the light of the same moon in the window. Our shadow's combining on the floor behind us, as their lengths reached over to the sheets of the bed.... _Where I've got to lie down with you soon_... the echo of the lyrics drifted through my mind.

I leaned down and kissed the hand resting on the top of her head. My hands ghosting over the curves of her shoulders, not wanting to startle her. She swerved in her chair and looked up at me, dropping her hair from the top of her head. It fell down around her shoulders as the fan blew its calming scent towards me. I closed my eyes and breathed in, allowing it to wash over my senses. My eyes only opening when I felt her lips on my own. She took my head in her hands and pulled me down to her, and I saw the small tears escape her eyes as she closed them, urging me to deepen the kiss with a flick of her tongue.

I moved to pick her up then, her legs twisting around and instinctually wrapping themselves around my waist. I was too weakened from the heat and didn't trust my trembling hands to hold her for long, so I sat back down on the chair, with her in my lap. Straddling its back as she straddled me. My foot accidently shoved the piles of books and they spread out around our feet. The radio hummed to us a french lullaby and the breeze from the open window drifted in to cool our entwined bodies.

She pulled away then, and stared down into my eyes, searching. "Ne me quitte pas," she whispered, speaking to me in french.

I smiled back at her. "Never again," I said, and kissed her once more.

**Fin**.

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A/N: *runs away waiting for the onslaught of PM's saying how she ruined the integrity of such a great song*


End file.
